


I Will Make Another Way

by ElrondsScribe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:59:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6423043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElrondsScribe/pseuds/ElrondsScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The product of an overtaxed mind. Pepper takes it upon herself to stop the Civil War before it starts. Companion ficlet to "There Must Be Another Way." AU, oneshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Pepper gets the package in the mail the same day she receives the email.

The email is from an address which even FRIDAY can't trace (which is worrisome). The subject line reads "Open this if you value the Avengers' lives!"

Much against her better judgment, she actually opens the email. Inside are nothing but two brief videos no more than two and a half minutes each - but by the time she's watched them through she's trembling head to foot, her stomach roiling, her face buried in her hands as she gasps and heaves. It's a good thing no one's visiting the office today, so no one catches the CEO of Stark industries fighting off a panic attack at her desk.

And that's not even the worst of it. The package, which she opens after she's finished with her emails, contains a large white paperback book with visually pleasing blue lettering that once again jolts Pepper's stomach.

For it is an exact replica, from the front, of the book she's just glimpsed in the videos (or rather the first video, the over-analytical part of her brain says automatically). The familiar United Nations logo sits proudly in the middle of the cover, and the title stares up (mockingly, she thinks) in blue ink that's somehow all the more revolting for being so easy on the eyes.

_The Sokovia Accords._

Pepper picks up the book and grips it with trembling hands, and inhales deeply. She's Tony Stark's CEO - how in the world is she supposed to talk the United Nations out of regulating the Avengers?

(How is this even her life? Did she honestly just think the words "talk the United Nations out of" anything?)

But she has to try. If she loves Tony, if she cares about the Avengers, she has no choice.

She breathes a deep sigh to still her hands, and opens the book. When, many hours later, she finally shuts it and rubs her sore eyes, she thinks that _maybe_ \- just _possibly_ \- she can start by at least find the Avengers a loophole or two.

She does have to start somewhere. 


	2. Finding Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper runs into the Winter Soldier.

A woman should really be able to get a doughnut and a cup of coffee in peace, Pepper reflects.

Phoebe's Donuts is an hour's drive from Avengers Tower (or is it Stark Tower again now?), in a quiet, respectable little middle-class district. Their maple frosted is one of Pepper's greatest weaknesses, and their coffee's not half bad either. She's ordered hers to go, and paused to rearrange her purse on her arm.

She's not sure what about the man in the far corner booth attracts her eye at first. Perhaps it's the dirty jacket he's wearing (in the middle of May, no less). Perhaps it's the baseball cap jammed onto his head, or the way he keeps his arms folded and his head down and avoids eye contact with anyone.

That's when it occurs to her - a wildly improbable chance, a possible reason a man (one man in particular) might have for covering his arms and hiding his hands. She purses her lips, wondering if it's too much to hope that she's wrong, considering the consequences if she's right. If she's wrong she'll have only embarrassed herself for a moment; but if she's right . . .

She gives her moment of respite a silent goodbye and reluctantly walks up to the booth. She slides into the seat across from the man in the jacket, sets down her coffee and donut, and tries to peer under the hat, a faded monstrosity that looks like a puppy has mistaken it for a favorite chew-toy. She catches a glimpse of long brown hair, and immediately her chances of being wrong plummet.

"Hello?" she says experimentally to the hat.

The bill of the cap tilts itself up automatically, and a scruffy, drawn face with deeply ringed bloodshot eyes peers at her from under it. Pepper involuntarily catches her breath - she was right after all. It is indeed the very face she's seen mere _hours_ ago on the screen of her desktop. The Winter Soldier. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. _Bucky_.

All these months that Cap and Wilson both have been spending in a futile search for the man, and Pepper Potts has run into him by sheer accident.

He's frowning, and his startlingly blue eyes glitter with suspicion. Obviously he can see that she at least has recognized him. Pepper forces herself to remember that his mind is probably (mostly) his own now.

"Do you mind -?" she sets her purse on the seat beside her. Barnes (what should she even call him?) moves the paper plate and wrinkled napkin in front of him, and gives a sharp jerk of his shoulders as if to say, "Knock yourself out."

She goes straight to the point. "I'm sure you know Captain Rogers has been looking for you," she says quietly.

Barnes' mouth twists. "You know Steve?" he mumbles hoarsely (Pepper allows herself a second to ponder the possibility that he rarely, if ever, uses his voice).

So he doesn't know her affiliation with Tony Stark. She decides to turn this to her advantage. "Yes, I know the Avengers. Roughly," she remembers the sometimes barely responsive Wanda Maximoff and the loss of JARVIS (yes, it's not a loss as such, but the enigma they call the Vision is not JARVIS, much though Tony may deny it). "He didn't send me," she adds.

Barnes grimaces again, hunching his shoulders. "I know."

Pepper doesn't doubt it. "Look, I'm sure you have your own reasons for not wanting Steve to find you," she says, making a conscious choice to refer to Captain America by his first name. "But he's been searching for -"

"I know exactly how long he's been looking for me," snaps Barnes.

"Then you probably know that he's not the only one," Pepper probes.

Barnes grunts noncommittally. The noise reminds her oddly of Tony in the morning.

"He wants to find you before someone less friendly does," she says. "I understand you were the world's best killer - or second-best, perhaps -" His eyes flick back up to hers in surprise. "- but still."

"Like Tony Stark?"

That pulls her up short for a moment; then she understands. (So the Winter Soldier _did_ have a hand in Tony's parents' deaths. And Barnes _remembers._ ) But she decides to be undeterred. "I think Tony Stark understands more than you might think about someone else tampering with his mind," she says. "But what does Stark have to do with anything?"

Barnes makes a sound that Pepper thinks is a mirthless laugh. "Steve _lives_ at Stark Tower. What'm I supposed to do, go live with him?"

She looks at him closely. "That doesn't sound like the reason you don't want Steve to find you. Or at least not the whole reason."

Something she can't quite quantify flits across his face, and he studies her for a moment as she takes a sip of her coffee. "You his girlfriend or somethin'?"

She almost slams down her cup and claps a spare napkin over her mouth as she shakes with laughter. "Me? Hardly!" she snorts when she can speak. She wipes her mouth. "I don't think I'm his type anyway!"

Barnes' lips begin to stretch into the beginnings of a smile. "He's still single, isn't he?"

Pepper thinks of poor Wilson and Natasha, and chuckles again. "Yes, Steve is still single."

Barnes' eyes stray toward her doughnut. "Hey, are you gonna, um, eat that?"

"Yes," says Pepper in the tone she uses on Tony when he's been making inappropriate jokes about Senator Stern. "If you're hungry, I can take you to get a meal." And she smiles, and bites into her doughnut.

Seventy minutes later, a silver Mercedes pulls up behind Avengers Tower and out of the driver's seat steps a tall, well-dressed woman with strawberry blonde hair. A taller man who looks like he sleeps under a bridge climbs out of the passenger's seat, and glances around uneasily as the woman leads the way into the Tower.


End file.
